Twenty Times Better than the Pill

What improves public health, increases high-school graduation rates, reduces poverty, and helps balance state budgets? Effective, affordable, accessible contraception. When 9000 St. Louis youth and women were offered the free contraceptive of their choice, three-quarters chose a top-tier, long acting method—a state-of-the-art implant or IUD—and both teen pregnancy and abortion need plummeted. The top-tier methods were twenty times more effective than the Pill at preventing unintended pregnancy. Can we replicate that experience across the Northwest?